


Détente

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: If At First You Don't Succeed [4]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:04:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick meets Stephen for the first time since the British Museum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Détente

            Nick recognised Stephen at once, of course, even though Stephen had his back to him. He always stood out: tall, striking and generally attracting a variety of admiring glances.

 

            He was standing just out of the flow of traffic, looking up at Nelson’s Column. He wore a heavy brown jacket, blue scarf, jeans and boots, and he looked just like he had always done. Nick could see Stephen the undergrad, Stephen the post-grad, Stephen his research assistant, Stephen his right-hand-man at the ARC, even Stephen the traitor he had pushed away in the tense lines of this man’s back and shoulders, and he felt a pang of longing. Stephen had been his closest friend for a very long time. Losing contact with him had been painful.

 

            It had taken a while for Connor to realise that Nick was descending into alcoholism in the wake of Stephen’s departure; it had taken even longer for Connor and Abby’s combined efforts to drag him onto a safer, less destructive path. Only in the past two years or so had Nick come to realise that Stephen might have been hovering just as close to danger in the wake of their estrangement.

 

            He wondered if the beautiful woman he’d met at the anomaly in the British Museum years ago had been responsible for pulling Stephen to safety, and where she was now. They were still together, he knew, although not married. They had a daughter, who must be around two years old now. They lived in New York. They were only visiting London for a short time.

 

            Stephen turned around, and Nick stood frozen, only a few metres away.

 

            “Nick,” Stephen said. Maybe he sounded calm to anyone listening, but Nick could hear the faint crack and waver in his voice, see Stephen’s restless hands tuck into his jacket pockets to hide that they were shaking.

 

            Nick licked dry lips. “Stephen.”

 

            “It’s been a long time,” Stephen said levelly, standing in the shadow of the Trafalgar Square lions and staring Nick down.

 

            Nick nodded automatically; he would have agreed to anything Stephen said. He was remembering the meeting in the British Museum, the anomaly where they’d been chasing a Pristichampsus and had found two civilians, one of whom had turned out to be Stephen’s girlfriend. She’d called Stephen, and Stephen had immediately come to find her, the same way he would once have responded to a call for help from Nick – except that when Stephen had come to the British Museum he had found Nick, and Nick had flung accusations at him and watched him shrink and recoil. Now Nick was the one shrinking and recoiling, and he had no Sarah Page to defend him.

 

            He thought he deserved it.

 

            “A very long time,” Nick said finally.

 

            There was a long pause.

 

            “It’s cold out here,” Stephen remarked, abruptly. He didn’t appear to be feeling the cold, warmly dressed with his jacket open, but Nick was starting to register the chill and wondering about going inside.

 

            Nick nodded. “Café in the Crypt?”

 

            “I was thinking Caffè Nero,” Stephen said. “Sarah and Bryony are at the brass-rubbing thing in St Martin’s Crypt.”

 

            “Oh?”

 

            “Yeah. I don’t know which of them is having more fun. Bryony because she gets to scribble everywhere with crayons and nobody minds, or Sarah because of all the mediaeval brasses and things.”

 

            Nick swallowed the sting of realising that Stephen wanted to keep him away from his partner and daughter. He didn’t have any right to Stephen’s trust, not yet. It had been too long. “Bryony must be, what, two now?”  


           “Nearly three,” Stephen said, and Nick heard the instinctive ring of pride in his voice. He was slightly surprised; Stephen had always been reserved and slightly nervous around kids, and if Nick had had to guess all those years before, he’d have pegged Stephen as someone who just didn’t want them. Stephen dug in his pockets, and fished out his phone. He called up an image on the screen, and held it out to Nick: a tan-skinned little girl with bright eyes, short, messy dark hair, a dress covered in paint handprints and Stephen’s cheekiest grin on her face.

 

          “She’s a holy terror,” Stephen said proudly.

 

          Nick was surprised to find himself smiling. “She looks just like you.” He squinted, and a flash of the tall, dark-haired woman who’d taken him off at the knees in the British Museum made its way into his memory. “And a lot like Sarah, too. I think. The nose.”

 

          Stephen nodded. “She talks like Sarah. Sarah’s grad students have this habit of teaching her Sarah’s catchphrases – I caught them teaching her to say ‘Brilliant!’ in just the same tone, except Bryony lisps, so it was ‘Bwilliant!’, and Sarah was sitting in the corner laughing her head off.”

 

          Nick laughed himself. He felt rusty, but the smile on his face wouldn’t go away, and he found he didn’t want to.

 

         Stephen looked at him, and Stephen was smiling, and Nick’s heart missed several beats at once, which probably wasn’t good for it at his age. “Coffee?”

 

         “Okay,” Nick said, and took the first tentative steps towards reconciliation.


End file.
